Sanborn: Texas needs to adjust immigration system

Unaccompanied children who cross border a safety issue

By Bob Sanborn,By Bob Sanborn

Published 3:58 pm, Friday, June 20, 2014

The surge in unaccompanied migrant children on the Texas border is not primarily an immigration issue. Thousands of young children are being forced to make an unimaginable choice: to stay in a home that is plagued by abuse or violence or to flee, alone. During the last eight months in Texas we have detained 33,000 children traveling without parents or guardians.

What is the outcome for these children?

Most will eventually be repatriated to home countries where they will return to horrific violence and for many, certain death. What is our role in keeping these children safe?

Consider José and Maritza. According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner, José was the victim of child abuse. He reported that his stepfather would often hit him with a belt, punch him and beat him with a metal pipe. Maritza was the victim of horrific gang violence. She reported that a gang member "liked her." In El Salvador, when gang members like young girls, they rape them, kill them and throw them in plastic bags. José and Maritza made the extremely difficult decision to leave their homes and flee to an uncertain future in an unknown country.

Unfortunately, José and Maritza are not alone. By the end of this year, the Office of Refugee Resettlement is expecting to see more than 60,000 unaccompanied children fleeing their homes and entering United States custody: up from only 6,560 in 2011. The United States is not the only country to see an increase in the number of unaccompanied children seeking refuge. Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, Mexico and Costa Rica have also seen up to a 700 percent increase in the number of children seeking asylum.

What could be driving record numbers of children to flee their homes? Ninety-two percent of the children in the children's surge migrating to the United States come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The violence and danger in these countries is so pervasive that it has been compared to the level of violence in armed conflict regions such as Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. Not surprisingly, most of the children fleeing these countries report systemic gang violence as a reason for making the difficult choice to leave.

Just as distressing is that one in five children report fleeing abusive homes.

Fortunately, many children like José and Maritza qualify for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status. SIJS is a path to lawful status available to children who are escaping abuse, neglect or abandonment by one or both parents. Each year, up to 9,000 individuals with special immigrant status can attain lawful permanent residency, but far fewer manage to obtain it due to a lack of awareness and legal representation.

In 2012, only 2,250 children with special immigrant juvenile status managed to adjust their status to permanent residency. Without this adjustment, their lawful status will be revoked when they pass the age of dependency, and they will lose any protections they were entitled to receive under federal law.

Many thousands of children get left behind by an immigration system that doesn't give them the chance to fight for their rights.

By increasing the legal representation of these children at the state level, we can ensure that they know their rights and get their day in court. Now that the number of unaccompanied children entering the country has grown to 60,000, it's time to re-evaluate the number of available adjustments and the way SIJS eligible children move through the system.

Another simple way of remedying the broken system is by making minor changes to the Texas Family Code. According to federal law, SIJS relief is available until a child turns 21.

However, due to the definition of dependency in the Texas Family Code, children in Texas who would otherwise be eligible for SIJS relief are barred from obtaining it. By changing the legal definition of "dependent" for SIJS purposes, we can get Texas law in line with federal standards and prevent children from aging out of the system. Ensuring that children can take advantage of the benefits that they are eligible for under existing law will make it possible for them to find stability and have a childhood.

Unaccompanied children migrating to the United States is not an immigration issue but a child safety issue. For children like José and Maritza, focusing on ideological differences will only add to the difficulty of their long struggle. We need to work together to make sure that when we say, "Children are our future," we mean all children.

Sanborn is president and CEO of Children at Risk, a Texas-based nonpartisan research and advocacy group focused on children.